Tradition and Prudence in Locke's Exceptions to Toleration

Abstract

Why did Locke exclude Catholics and atheists from toleration? Not, I contend, because he was trapped by his context, but because his prudential approach and practical judgments led him to traditional texts. I make this argument first by outlining the connections among prudential exceptionality, practical judgments, and traditional texts. I then describe important continuities between conventional English understandings of the relationship between state and religion and Locke's writings on toleration, discuss Locke's conception of rights, and illustrate his use of prudential exceptions and distinctions. I conclude by arguing that Locke's problems are relevant to assessing contemporary liberal discussions of toleration and the separation of state and religion that lean heavily on practical justifications.

Locke on Toleration and Inclusion

“…This cluster of intolerable opinions is often interpreted as directed to proscribe Catholicism (Lorenzo 2003, 252; Marshall 1994, 365–6; Sandoz 1972, 35), which was largely seen as the bête noire of the seventeenth‐century English political imagination (Fatovic 2005). However, it is perhaps wise to follow Waldron's suggestion and not jump to this conclusion (Waldron 2002, 222–3).…”

“…In the context of a tolerant church, however, the intolerable practical opinions relating to sectarian prerogatives are either unintelligible or take on the properties of speculative opinions, matters of contestable theoretical principle or of purely individual soteriological concern, rather than socially harmful action. The mutually reinforcing tendencies of tolerant governments and churches allow wide scope for practical opinions as discursive elements in society, even as Locke's probabilistic epistemology allows for constant reexamination and revision of prevailing opinions (Lorenzo 2003, 253). The non‐interference in religion by government and the religious encouragement of toleration transform potentially destructive opinions in the best case into subjects of productive inquiry, and at worst into matters of political indifference.…”